To:THE LIBRARY SECTION OF THE COMMISSARIAT FOR EDUCATION[1]

Published:First published in 1945 inLenin Miscellany XXXV.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      page177b.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

30. XII. 1918

Pleasereceive the bearer, Comrade Prokofiev. His
request for the requisitioning of Surkov’s library for a district
of 40,000 people is, in my opinion, correct. Surkov,
perhaps, should retain certain rights to use it? Please send
me a copy of your decision on this question, and help the
Rodniki comrades to expand their library. Can they not be
sent one of the libraries requisitioned from the landowners?
Please inform me about this as
well.[2]

V.Ulyanov(Lenin)Chairman, C.P.C.

[1]Thequestion of requisitioning Surkov’s library was discussed on
December 27, 1918, at an enlarged sitting of the Executive
Committee, the Extraordinary Commission and the Committee of the
R.C.P.(B.) of the town of Rodniki. Its decision noted that “the books
in Citizen Surkov’s library, which are of social value, are shut away
and unread at a time when there is an immense lack of books for
the enlightenment of broad masses of workers and peasants”, and
that since a library was being formed in Rodniki “the
requisitioned books will be of tremendous benefit as public property”. In
order to give Lenin fuller information on this question, themeeting decided to send A. N. Prokofiev, secretary of the local
Cheka, to see him.

Leninreceived Prokofiev and after a talk with him wrote his
letter to the People’s Commissariat for Education.

[2]Inreply to Lenin’s letter, V. Y. Bryusov, head of the Library
Section of the People’s Commissariat for Education, informed
him on January 2, 1919, that A. N. Prokofiev had been received
and heard out in the Library Section. Bryusov wrote that,
according to existing rules, the requisitioning of libraries could be
permitted only with the knowledge and consent of the People’s
Commissariat for Education, in order that, when requisitioning
takes place, the interests of the state as a whole should be taken
into account—primarily the requirements of the large state
libraries: the libraries of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the State
Library of the U.S.S.R., named after Lenin), the Historical
Museum, the Socialist Academy, the universities, and others. In
view of this Prokofiev was asked to submit an inventory of the
requisitioned library.

Onreceipt of Bryusov’s memo, Lenin wrote a letter to
Prokofiev (see this volume, Document 235).